Critique of Fantasy, Vol. 1: Between a Crypt and a Date Mark addresses both the style or genre of fantasy and the mental faculty, long the hot property of philosophical ethics. Freud passed it along in his 1907 essay on the poetics of daydreaming when he addressed omnipotent wish fantasy as the source and resource of the aspirations and resolutions of art, which, however, the artwork can never look back at or acknowledge. By grounding his genre in the one fantasy that is true, the Gospel, J.R.R. Tolkien obviated and made obvious the ethical mandate of fantasy's restraining order.With George Lucas's Star Wars we entered the borderlands of the fantasy and science fiction genres, a zone resulting from and staggering a contest, which Tolkien inaugurated in the 1930s. The history of this contested borderland marks changes that arose in expectation of what the new media held in store, changes realized (but outside the box of what had been projected) upon the arrival of the unanticipated digital relation, which at last seemed to award the fantasy genre the contest prize.Freud's notion of the Zeitmarke (datemark), the indelible impress of the present moment that triggered the daydream that denies it, already introduced the import of fantasy's historicization. Science fiction won a second prize that keeps it in the running. No longer bound to projecting the future, the former calling which in light of digitization it flunked, science fiction becomes allegorical and reading in the ruins of its failed predictions illuminates all the date marks and crypts hiding out in the borderlands it traverses with fantasy. To motivate the import of an evolving science fiction genre, Critique of Fantasy makes Gotthard Günther's reflections in the 1950s on American science fiction - as heralding a new metaphysics and a new planetary going on interstellar civilization - a mainstay of its cultural anthropology with B-genres.===After thirty years teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2011 Laurence A. Rickels accepted a professorship in art and theory at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe and taught there as successor to Klaus Theweleit until 2017. During 2018 Rickels was Eberhard Berent Visiting Professor and Distinguished Writer at New York University, and he continues to offer seminars in media and philosophy at the European Graduate School (Saas Fee, Switzerland and Malta) where he holds the Sigmund Freud Chair. Rickels is the author of Aberrations of Mourning (Minnesota, 1988), The Case of California (Minnesota, 1991), The Vampire Lectures (Minnesota, 1999), Nazi Psychoanalysis (Minnesota, 2002), The Devil Notebooks (Minnesota, 2008), Ulrike Ottinger: The Autobiography of Art Cinema (Minnesota, 2008), I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick (Minnesota, 2010), SPECTRE (Anti-Oedipus, 2013), Germany: A Science Fiction (Anti-Oedipus, 2014), and The Psycho Records (Columbia, 2016).

In the "Introduction; or, How Star Wars Became Our Oldest Cultural Memory" of the first volume of Critique of Fantasy, the gambit of a contest between science fiction and fantasy was already sketched out. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis aimed to separate the fantasy from the techno-science foregrounded in works by H.G. Wells, for example, and raise the fantasy or fairy-story to the power of an alternate adult literary genre. My study of the contest between the B-genres for ownership of the evolution of the social relation of art out of the condemned site of day dreaming required in the first place a reading apparatus, which the first volume derived from psychoanalytic theories of daydreaming's relationship to conscious thought, the unconscious, and artistic production as well as from their prehistory, the philosophies of dreams, ghosts, willing and wishing.

Set in the universe of the New York Times bestselling Three-Body Problem trilogy, The Redemption of Time continues Cixin Liu’s multi-award-winning science fiction saga. This original story by Baoshu—published with Liu’s support—envisions the aftermath of the conflict between humanity and the extraterrestrial Trisolarans. In the midst of an interstellar war, Yun Tianming found himself on the front lines. Riddled with cancer, he chose to end his life, only to find himself flash frozen and launched into space where the Trisolaran First Fleet awaited. Captured and tortured beyond endurance for decades, Yun eventually succumbed to helping the aliens subjugate humanity in order to save Earth from complete destruction. Granted a healthy clone body by the Trisolarans, Yun has spent his very long life in exile as a traitor to the human race. Nearing the end of his existence at last, he suddenly receives another reprieve—and another regeneration. A consciousness calling itself The Spirit has recruited him to wage battle against an entity that threatens the existence of the entire universe. But Yun refuses to be a pawn again and makes his own plans to save humanity’s future... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Legacy of Ash is an unmissable fantasy debut--an epic tale of intrigue and revolution, soldiers and assassins, ancient magic and the eternal clash of empires. A shadow has fallen over the Tressian Republic. Ruling families -- once protectors of justice and democracy -- now plot against one another with sharp words and sharper knives. Blinded by ambition, they remain heedless of the threat posed by the invading armies of the Hadari Empire. Yet as Tressia falls, heroes rise. Viktor Akadra is the Republic's champion. A warrior without equal, he hides a secret that would see him burned as a heretic. Josiri Trelanis Viktor's sworn enemy. A political prisoner, he dreams of reigniting his mother's failed rebellion. And yet Calenne Trelan, Josiri's sister, seeks only to break free of their tarnished legacy; to escape the expectation and prejudice that haunts the family name. As war spreads across the Republic, these three must set aside their differences in order to save their home. Yet decades of bad blood are not easily set aside. And victory -- if it comes at all -- will demand a darker price than any of them could have imagined.

Like its companion volume, "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction", this massive reference of 4,000 entries covers all aspects of fantasy, from literature to art.